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SERMON, 

PREACHED ON THANKSGIVING DAY, 



N0VP:MBKR 27, 1862, 



BY REV. W. S. LEAVITT, 



PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



HUDSON, N. Y. 



HUDSON : 
BRYAN & WEBB, PRINTERS, 

1S62. 






The following Sermon has been furnished for publication at the re- 
quest of many members of the four Congregations which were united 
in the public service of Tblvnksgiving Day ; who have kindly expressed 
their belief that its circulation in a printed form may be useful, "at this 
time when all must feel that our only dependence and hope is in God." 



SERMON. 



PSALM XLYL 1—3. 



-----. .. . „- J be carried into 

the midat of the sea ; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the 
mountains shake with the swelling thereof." 



We arc assembled, according to the annual custom, under the 
Proclamation of the Governor of this State, to express our united 
and public Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the mercies of the 
past year. Those mercies have been many and great. God has 
not left himself without witness among us, "in that he did good, 
and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our 
hearts with food and gladness." The seasons have been propi- 
tious — wasted by neither drought nor flood. The fields have 
given their harvests, and the orchards their luxuries, in unwonted 
profusion ; as if tlie very forces of nature had been kindly com- 
manded to aid the nation in bearing the increased burdens of the 
times. No pestilence has been added to the ordinary causes of 
disease, or interrupted the general prevalence of health. The 
authority of law has been maintained among us, giving safety to 
our homes, and protection to our industries. Our schools have 
continued their beneficent work in the education of the young ; 
and our houses of religious worship have witnessed their cus- 
tomary weekly gatherings of multitudes, coming with the voice 
of prayer and praise, and receiving — we arc permitted to believe 
— not without profit, the lessons of Christian faith, hope and 
charity. 



4 

Besides these local and common blessings — with a multitude 
more which every one's individual experience will suggest — we 
have many causes of thankfulness in the history of the nation, 
and of its great conflict for the maintenance of national life and 
unity, during the past year. We have to record the patience 
with which the burdens and sacrifices of the war have been en- 
dured ; and to accept it as a promise that the God who carried 
our fathers through sorer trials and greater privations on to vic- 
tory, will give us strength and patience to bear without murmur- 
ing the heavier burdens which are yet to come. 

AVe have cause for thanksgiving that so many thousands of 
true and loyal men have given themselves freely to the nation's 
service ; and have gone from pleasant homes, often from profit- 
able employments, cheerfully to endure the fcitigues and priva- 
tions of the camp, and the risks of the battle, that we may dwell 
in safety, that our Constitution and laws, and the great principles 
of freedom, which our fathers left us, may not be overthrown. 
And although their absence may have permitted some dark shad- 
ows of danger to appear on the horizon of the future, still we 
are thankful that they have gone — and we cannot believe that a 
nation which has sent forth its best and noblest sons to the battle, 
will prove itself so utterly corrupt as to betray that sacred cause 
which they have hallowed with their blood. Let God be thanked 
that, in a war which was forced upon us by the infinite wicked- 
ness of the leaders in this rebellion — upon whom, with those who 
gave them aid and comfort, the whole immeasurable guilt of it 
must forever rest— let God be thanked that, in such a war, the 
nation was not corrupt enough to perish by its own cowardice, 
and without one struggle for life. Bravely and manfully, though 
in sadness, did it gird itself for the strife which it had sought by 
every sacrifice, but that of principle and righteousness, to avert. 
And nobly have the sons of the nation answered to its patriotic 
calk They have gone forth from the unequalled intelligence and 
Christian civilization of New England— brave old Massachusetts, 
foremost here, as ever, in patriotism, in labor and self-sacrifice for 



every righteous cause and for the common good — from the pros- 
perity, the enterprise, and the thronging millions of our own im- 
perial State — from every State — from every city and village — 
they are gone forth, attended by the prayers and the good wishes 
of every loyal and Christian heart. 

They have gone forth — but they shall not all return. In many 
a home, and in many a heart, there is sorrow for one who shall 
be seen no more on earth. Slain upon the fields of conflict, east, 
and west, and south ; dying in hospitals ; wasted by toil and 
pestilence and battle, in that disastrous Peninsula Campaign — 
who shall count the thousands of true hearts that have ceased to 
beat ? who shall estimate the value of a nation's life that must be 
saved at such a fearful cost ? Dear to us be their memories — 
sacred the sorrows of those who niouru for them — holy the cause 
in which they fell. 

And they have not fallen in vain. AYith all its disasters, the 
year has been one of progress. We have seen the defensive line 
of the Rebellion broken, and our victorious hosts pressing far 
down into the regions it assumed to control. We have seen fort- 
ress after fortress surrendered to the courage of our armies, and 
the skill and valor of our navy. We have seen strong positions 
on our Southern coast successfully occupied and securely held. 
We have seen the mouth of the great Mississippi restored to our 
control by a naval battle which — for skill and desperate valor, 
and brilliant achievement, and strange incident — surpasses the 
wildest fables of romance ; and its great city held — as all rebel- 
lious cities must be — in a just and humane, but firm and unyield- 
ing grasp; its starving thousands fed by the charity of the Na- 
tional Government ; while Northern shrewdness and energy 
maintained among its lawless population, and through the pesti- 
lential heats of summer, a degree of order and health unknown 
there before. We have seen the aggressive movements of the 
Rebellion thrown back in disappointment ; while a new army, 
replacing that which was so mysteriously wasted, goes forth, led — 



6 

we trust — by brave and true men, pressing the insurgents away 
from our National Capital, and destined, as we earnestly hope, 
soon to give the finishing blow to the Rebellion itself. 

It has pleased God also to give us victories of statesmanship 
and moral principle, as well as of arms. Foreign wars and in- 
terventions have been averted from us hitherto. Measures have 
been taken for the opening of a grand highway from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, over which in years to come the commerce of the 
world shall pass. The nation has done itself honor in the sight 
of God and of the civilized world, by the removal of slavery from 
its Capital ; by the prohibition of it in all the Territories subject 
to the National control ; and by its efficient and successful meas- 
ures for the suppression of the infamous Slave-trade. Let us 
hope that no party madness or sectional fanaticism shall ever at- 
tempt to bring back upon us those departed shames. 

And even if there has been — as of necessity there must have 
been — error in the administration of afi^airs ; if there has been a 
lack of the needful vigor in the prosecution of the war ; if the 
frantic and malignant hatred, which the rebellion has manifested 
towards the laws and government of the land, has been treated 
with a well-meant but mistaken tenderness, which has protracted 
the strife, and greatly increased its cost in treasure and in far 
more precious blood — yet we cannot but acknowledge that iu 
this work — the greatest by far which any nation ever undertook 
— there has been real and visible progress during the past year. 

Still, with all the occasions public and private which we have 
for thanksgiving — there is yet a burden on our hearts. We have 
to confess that this is not the Thanksgiving we had hoped to keep. 
It had been our hope to see a righteous and honorable peace, if 
not fully secured, nearer far than it now appears. It had been 
our hope that the misguided and ignorant population of the re- 
bellious States would, before this time, cast off the fearful despot- 
ism which has brought such misery upon them, and gladly re- 
turn to their allegiance, and aid the National Government in the 



restoration of order and law. These hopes — with many others 
— have been disappointed ; and the prevailing thought in our 
minds of late has been, that God was leading us through dark 
and tangled paths, where the way before us was perplexed and 
gloomy, and whose end no mortal sagacity could foretell. We 
have seen plainly enough that God was casting us into a furnace 
of affliction; but whether it should be a purifying or a destroy- 
ing fire, has been at times a question of fearful uncertainty. And 
looking at the terrible calamities of war, and at the waste of life, 
so often apparently without purpose or result, our saddened 
hearts have been inclined to say, "When will this be over ? When 
•will these sorrows and desolations cease ?" We have felt most 
deeply that human wisdom and courage were not enough to carry 
us safely and triumphantly through the struggle ; we have seen 
that our ways must be committed to God, and our hearts must 
rest in Ilis perfect wisdom and love. And we have felt that still 
those words with which the chosen nation of old — passing through 
troubles and dangers as great and overwhelming as ours — sus- 
tained its courage and uttered its faith in God, were no less fitting 
to our lips, and no less precious to our hearts : "God is our refuge 
and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not 
we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains 
be carried into the midst of the sea ; though the waters thereof 
roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swell- 
ing thereof." 

God the Protector and IIope of the Nation. 

This is the subject to which these words most naturally direct 
our thoughts, and which seems to be the most appropriate re- 
ligious lesson for the times. Let us then consider some things 
in our present national condition, with respect to which we may 
make God our refuge and strength, and may safely trust in Him. 

1. We may trust in God to prevent the sacrifices which we 
have made from being without fruit and in vain. The thought is 



8 

a dreadful one, -wliich the mind shrinks from entertaining even 
for a moment, that all those heavy burdens shall have been en- 
dured by us for no purpose. I speak not of the mere pecuniary 
sacrifices and losses which we have ah'eady felt, or which may 
come upon us hereafter. The reflection is obvious that — so far as 
our former prosperity and wealth may have depended upon a 
complicity with the great sin that inspires and maintains this re- 
bellion — we are simply illustrating, on a grand scale, the ancient 
saying of God by the mouth of the Prophet : "As the partridge 
sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not, so he that getteth riches, 
and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at 
his end shall be a fool." And if the sacrifices of property which 
•we are compelled to make, shall teach us that great lesson that, 
by the very laws of nature and of God, the wealth that was 
gained by withholding from the laborer his just reward cannot 
be permanent ; and the prosperity which one part of the people 
have built upon another, lies under the condemnation of a right- 
eous God, and cannot endure — if they shall make us too wise and 
right-minded to try over again the old experiment, of flattering 
and upholding iniquity for the sake of peace and profit, instead of 
discouraging it — then assuredly these pecuniary sacrifices, and 
this present discipline of adversity, will not have been in vain. 

But I speak now of the gifts — more precious far than pros- 
perity, and trade, and wealth — which we have off'ered to God for 
the Nation's life — the gift which the parents have made of their 
child, the wife of her husband, the sister of her brother, the chil- 
dren of their father — the life laid down in the battle, or wasted by 
disease, or maimed and disfigured by wounds — the heart sending 
forth its dearest treasures, its best beloved, to suffer and to die — 
the home made desolate by the absence o some loved and trust- 
ed one — the privations, the sad thoughts and longings for a sight 
of the distant home and kindred, the hunger and weariness, the 
toil and pain, which our brave sons and brothers in arms have so 
cheerfully borne. I say we may trust in God that these sacrifices 



shall not be lost. For they have not been made for any selfish 
object, nor to uphold any injustice or wrong ; but in a spirit of 
pure and earnest patriotism ; from a real love of righteousness, 
liberty, and order ; for the benefit of the whole Nation, not for the 
selfish aggrandizement of a few — for this, mothers have been 
willing to give up their sons — for this, brave and noble-hearted 
men have gone cheerfully to death. And these sacrifices have 
been hallowed by the incense of pure and earnest devotion* 
Every Christian heart in the land — unless it were blinded for a 
season by the delusions of Satan — has been unceasing in its hum- 
ble acknowledgments of our dependence upon God, in its sincere 
supplications to God that He would lead the Nation wisely, that 
He would give the final victory to the right, that He would ac- 
cept these precious gifts — the blood, the pain, the partings, the 
cherished hopes, the mournings — which have been so freely of-' 
fered ; and would cause tlicm to accomplish great and blessed 
results in the cause of truth and righteousness. And God may 
be trusted with these sacrifices. He will not let them be in vain* 
We cannot find in all history an instance where so much 6nff"er- 
ing, with a pure and honest purpose, and in a righteous causey 
has been lost. And although the precious seed may lie buried 
long in the dust; although the harvest may be long deferred ; 
although over much of this suff"ering a mystery is hanging still, 
and we ask,Why was the Nation made to give up so many precious 
lives seemingly in vain ? yet we know that the sacrifice was made 
with just and true motives ; and we cannot doubt that it is ac- 
cepted and cherished of God. He knows what is the cost of such 
sacrifices ; He has given up His only Son to death for us : and 
by the recompense that comes from the sorrows and the shame 
of Christ — the redemption of a guilty race — the anthems and 
eternal blessedness of the redeemed — His love seems to say to 
every bereaved and afflicted one, to every suff'erer in the camp 
and the battle, " God is your refuge and strength, a very present 
help in trouble." These sacrifices, made in no selfish spirit, and 
for no mere personal ends, shall not be in vain. Precious in ths 



10 

sight of tlie Lord is the death of every one who, to save the Na- 
tion's life, nobly and bravely gave np his own. 

2. We may trust in God to prevent this Nation from being 
destroyed. It has sometimes appeared in the course of the con- 
flict, as if there were danger of this ; that the aims of the Re- 
bellion to destroy all the power of cohesion, and all the sentiment of 
National unity, would be successful ; and the States of this Union 
tvould break the tie that bound them together, and live in the 
weakness and perils of separation, or fall into the hands of the 
confederate rebels ; and in either case the United States of Amer- 
ica — the old nationality, whose name was so rich in the memo- 
ries of the patriotism of other days, and in the hopes and prom- 
ises of freedom and intelligence for the world — would cease to 
exist. And apparently there have not been wanting, even among 
ourselves, those who were base enough and wicked enough to 
conspire for this end. But if we look calmly at the lessons of 
history, and at the principles of God's government which have 
been brought to light in his dealings with Nations, I think we 
shall see that this peril is one which we may reasonably hope that 
God will enable us to avert. That a nationality should be de- 
stroyed, has not been a common thing iu history. That a Na- 
tion which, by valor, and patriotism, and energy, had gained a 
standing for itself among the mighty Nations of the earth, and 
was still full of vigorous life, maintaining social order, and ac- 
tually making progress in intelligence and virtue, should be blot- 
ted out of existence, is — if I mistake not — a thing utterly un- 
known to history. And there are reasons why it should be so. 
It does not accord with any conceptions of God's character which 
are authorized by His Providence or by His Word, to suppose 
that He will destroy things which are of permanent value to man- 
kind. And we cannot hesitate to count among these the intelli- 
gent freedom, the universal education, the respect for honest la- 
bor, the equal rights, which have been established in this land. 
They are precious, not only to us and our children, but to the 
whole world. They are precious — and we may trust them in the 



11 

care of God. Surely he will not suffer them to be swept away 
by floods of anarchy ; nor to be trafficked away by political gam- 
blers, or by foolish and vulgar longings for an " aristocracy," in 
■which labor shall be degraded, and the working man deprived of 
his equal rights and his privileges of education, and reduced to 
the condition of a slave. Nor has it been God's custom to destroy 
a Nation in which there was found much that was really good. 
And with all that is corrupt among us, yet we know that there is 
much — very much — of truly Christian principle, and honest, up- 
right life — of noble charity, and earnest purpose and toil for the 
•welfare of mankind. On many a heathen shore are missionaries 
of the Gospel of Christ, sent forth by the gifts and self-denials of 
Christians in the United States ; and in many an abode of pover- 
ty, ignorance, vice, in our own land — in all our cities — and even 
among the ignorant and degraded victims of oppression who 
have come within the protection of our armies — are found the 
disciples of Christ, noiselessly doing His own works of love, feed- 
ing, clothing, healing, teaching the lessons of salvation. We say 
these things not in boasting, but in faith and hope. Can it be that 
such a Nation shall be destroyed, and its name cease to be heard 
among men ? We know that even Sodom would have been spared 
if God had found within its walls ten righteous men. We know 
that he has destroyed many a Nation for its iniquity, but never 
one for its resistance to iniquity. 

The very thought is an impeachment against His throne ; and 
now that this Nation, by the action of its government, is placed 
so conspicuously and gloriously on the side of Right, can it be 
that a Just God will suft'er it to perish by falling under the control 
of the very iniquity which it is seeking to restrain and cast out ? 
Can it be that He will suffer this people, in which there is so much 
of real good, and so many elements of progress towards a still 
higher good, to throw away its old and honored name, and trans- 
form itself into a new nationality, in which the infinite corrup- 
tions and crimes of slavery shall have undisputed sway — making 



12 

the whole land a habitation of cruelty ; destroying its morality ; 
turning its religion into a gigantic sham ; suppressing the legiti- 
mate freedom of speech ; taking away from the multitude the ad- 
vantages of education and the rights of citizens; rendering the 
Nation everywhere an aggressor against the liberties and civiliza- 
tion of the age; and so making it a curse to itself and to all the 
world ? No ! it cannot be. The United States of America shall 
not perish. " God is our refuge and strength, a very present help 
in trouble ; " and we can trust him to defeat the conspira- 
cies of the wicked, and to open the eyes of the Nation to its perils, 
and arouse its strength to resist them, in time to save its national 
life and honor. He holds in His hands the waves of rebellion 
and sedition ; and we will not fear though the waters thereof roar 
and be troubled, and though the mountains — -yea, the mountains 
of our own State, — shake with the swelling thereof. We will re- 
member the marvellous deliverances, from open violence and se- 
cret treachery, which He has wrought for us the year past, and 
we will accept them as signs that the Nation's life — so often on 
the verge of ruin, and yet saved — shall not be lost. And what- 
ever convulsions and disturbances may come — " though the earth 
be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst 
of the sea" — we will trust in Him that the noble heritage of our 
fathers, the national name chosen by their wisdom and made illus- 
trious by their virtues, the intelligence, the education, the civil 
and religious freedom, the practical and earnest Christianity, which 
we have inherited from them, and to which we are not wholly 
unfaithful — are among those things which cannot be shaken — 
which the world and the kingdom of Christ have need of — and 
which therefore shall remain. 

3. May we not also trust in God to prevent the division of the 
people into two separate Nations, involving the certainty of per- 
petual war ? I will not stop to argue this certainty. It impresses 
itself upon the mind more and more deeply, as we study the nature 
and possibilities of the strife in which we are engaged. We see 



13 

that, ■tt'ith the division of the land which is attempted, there can- 
not be peace. With a Nation stretching along our boundaries — 
undetermined and undeterminable — for two thousand miles ; and 
such a Nation as we see so plainly developed in this Rebellion — 
treacherous, aggressive, unscrupulous — bound by neither laws nor 
oaths — the passions and cunning of the savage armed with the 
■weapons of civilization — with the constant irritations of such a 
neighborhood ; with our great navigable rivers held under divided 
control ; with the perpetually arising questions of boundary, ju- 
risdiction, finance, foreign alliances and relations — it is plain 
enough that enduring peace would be simply impossible. Many 
would have chosen to let such a division take place, rather than 
this terrible war, if it had given the very slightest promise of 
peace. 

But is it not plain that the interest of this Nation and of the 
world — the interest of Christianity itself — requires that there 
should not be perpetual war in this land ? Would not too many 
of the movements for the progress, the elevating, the Christian- 
izing of the world, be hindered and counteracted by such a con- 
dition of things ? Is not the influence which this land of schools, 
of churches, of freedom, of a missionary spirit, is capable of ex- 
ercising upon the advancement of Christ's dominion over the hu- 
man race, too precious to be sacrificed on the altar of continual 
war ? May we not therefore look to God, our refuge and strength 
— our Protector and Hope — to avert from us this calamity, and 
— for the sake of bis own name — for the advancement of his 
kingdom of peace and good will to men — to save the Nation's 
unity as well as its life ? May we not trust in Him to give such 
wisdom to our counsels, and such valor and success to our arms, 
that weshall be delivered from the divisive schemes of this Rebell- 
ion, and shall be — not only as before, but more and better than 
before — the United States of America, one and inseparable? 

4. We may trust in God to bring the Nation, through this 
present conflict, into a better state. And here the question will 



14 

arise, " Do we want to see any better state than that in which 
we were before the Rebellion commenced ?" For myself I an- 
swer frankly — as a citizen and a Christian — I do. I want to see 
some salutary fruits springing from the chastisement which we 
are receiving at the hand of God. I want to see that old prin- 
ciple of God's word illustrated — " When Thy judgments are in 
the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." 
I want to see the Nation obeying God's call to repentance, which 
comes in such a stern and terrible shape ; putting away its in- 
iquities ; and learning those simple and obvious lessons which the 
events of the time are holding up to our view — that honesty, jus- 
tice, a disposition to put away that which is wrong rather than to 
cling to it, are the only security which a Nation has for prosperi- 
ty, for life and peace. And — assuming that this desire for a re- 
fining and purifying result of our present calamities, is the senti- 
ment which every disciple of Christ learns from His Gospel — 1 
think we may safely trust in God that he will bring it to pass. 
We rest this faith on the teachings of history and of Christ. 
There are in the world two classes of minds : the one fixing its 
thoughts intently upon some former period, pleasing itself with 
the belief that then and there was the best and most desirable state 
of man ; and always looking for the restoration of "things as they 
were:" the other,deeply impressed with the evils of the past and the 
present, aiming and hoping for the higher good which the future 
promises ; and when the time of changes and disturbances has 
come, expecting that they will accomplish a portion at least of 
that higher good. If we look calmly at the lessons of history, 
we cannot deny that — in the long run — they favor the hopes of 
the latter class, rather than those of the former. There is proba- 
bly no instance in the history of Nations where, after conflicts 
and convulsions, a former state of things was precisely restored. 
Men have learned righteousness when God's judgments were in 
the land — if they have learned it slowly, imperfectly, and in spite 
of themselves, yet they have learned it — and the earnest wishes 
and protests of many, whose only aim was the restoration of 



15 

former things, have not hindered his Providence from bringing 
to pass a better state. Is there not reason for the faith that it 
■will be so with us ? 

Or if we look at the Gospel of Christ, we find this to be one of its 
chief and leading ideas : that he was manifested that he might de- 
stroy the works of the devil ; that he has set up a kingdom in 
the earth which is always fighting against the powers of evil, and 
always gaining victories over them; that His Gospel has come in- 
to human society as a leaven, whose working cannot be stopped 
until the whole shall be transformed ; that the whole attitude and 
aim of His kingdom \s, progress, away from the imperfections and 
wrongs of the present, towards the brighter and better days of a 
redeemed and regenerated world ; that Christ himself is " the 
head over all things to the church" — in other words, that he is em- 
ploying all the agencies of Providence — the forces of nature, the 
energies, and even the passions and crimes of men — to carry on 
the progress of that redemption of the world from sin and 
wretchedness, for which he oflcred up his life on the cross. And 
therefore it would seem to be plain that they who are hoping and 
laboring for the world's advance — for the removal of ita evils and 
the abolition of its wrongs — and who are expecting that every 
period of change and disturbance among Nations will result in 
the attainment of a higher good — are in more cordial sympathy 
with the kingdom of Christ, and more certain of the fulfillment 
of their hopes, than those whose only wish is to reproduce some 
former state. Christ — with his infinite resources, and his infinite 
love — is on their side. 

It is upon such foundations — more substantial than any pres- 
ent appearances — we build our faith in God, that He will bring 
the Nation, through this present conflict, into a better state. We 
believe that he will make his chastenings — not joyous but griev- 
ous, as for the present they seem — to yield the peaceable fruit of 
righteousness. We trust and hope that whatever was evil in the 
temper of the Nation will be subdued by its sorrows ; that its 



16 

politics will become less corrupt, its officers more just, the tone 
of its society purer ; that it will learn more humbly to confess its 
reliance upon God, more reverently to fear Him and keep His 
commands ; that it will put off something of the insane worship 
of money and material prosperity, and gain a higher respect for 
truth, honor and equity. We may trust and hope that, through 
the clouds and storms of this gigantic struggle, God will open a 
wise and eflBcient way for the removal — more or less gradual — of 
that great wickedness, human slavery ; which has been the only 
real disturber of our peace ; and which might be so easily, so 
safely, and instantly brought to an end, by the simple obedience 
to that great law, which natural justice and the Word of God 
proclaim — that the laborer is worthy of his hire. 

And when God's mercy shall have accomplished this, how 
glorious the future that will open before the Nation, thus regen- 
erated amid the tempests of war ! its unity assured by the casting 
out of the only disturbing force — its light and influence wel- 
comed by the multitudes of every land, because its professions of 
love to freedom shall be no longer contradicted by its deeds — its 
moral force efficient through all the earth in building up the 
kingdom of Christ, because its Christianity shall be no longer 
branded by heathen lips with the reproach of hypocrisy — its 
prosperity more substantial, because no longer mingled with the 
gains of oppression — its peace enduring because built upon right- 
eousness. For the coming of this bright future, our faith reaches 
out through the present gloom, and makes God its refuge and 
strength. 

It is true, there are some indications which seem adverse to 
this hope. There are efforts apparently designed, not only to 
prevent the bringing of the Nation into a better state, but to 
make its future condition infinitely worse and more corrupt than 
it was before. There are utterances of hatred and prejudice, so 
frantic and wicked that they must be utterly appalling to every 
humane and Christian heart, unless it were permitted us to be- 



17 

lieve that tliese violences are prophetic of -their own speedy de- 
feat — like the demonstrations of that evil spirit, who is spoken of 
as " having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a 
short time." But it cannot be that such efforts will prevail. We 
will not lose our faith in Heaven's sympathies with the right. God 
is just ; and His righteous government — encouraging and build- 
ing up the good, weakening and casting out the evil — rests upon 
the sure foundation of omnipotence ; and the madness and 
wickedness of men cannot overthrow it. 

And finally, we may trust in God that He will make our calam- 
ities and struggles to aid in the accomplishment of His glorious 
purposes of redeeming love ; in filling the earth with His glory, 
and extending to all the children of men the knowledge and the 
blessings of His great salvation. 

To God, therefore, we come, on this day of our Thanksgiving, 
as our refuge and strength, our Protector and Hope ; fearing not 
though the waves should be troubled, and the mountains re- 
moved. To His guardian love we commit all — the sacrifices we 
have made — the sorrows we have borne — our armies — our Gov- 
ernment — our hopes for the progress of righteousness and the re- 
turn of peace. 

And now, accepting with gratitude the mercies He has given, 
and the hopes he has permitted us to cherish ; doing our part, as 
true and loyal men, in this struggle for national life and prosperi- 
ty ; bearing without complaint the burdens which are the price 
of our deliverance ; standing firmly and loyally by our National 
Government ; aiding it with all material and moral force, and by 
the offering of constant and earnest prayer ; carefully watching 
against, and promptly discouraging, all discords or attempted se- 
ditions that may rise among ourselves ; and waiting in patience 
for the time when God shall give us a brighter and happier 
Thanksgiving Day — we enter the untried paths of another year. 
And through whatever scenes they shall lead us, whatever woes 



18 

and burdens they shall bring, whatever clouds and fears shall 
gather about us — this shall be the song and the support of our 
faith : 

God is our refuge and strength, 

A very present help in trouble. 

Therefore will not we fear, 

Though the earth be removed, 

And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea ,- 

Though the mountains thereof roar and be troubled ; 

Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. 

The Lord of hosts is with us, 

The God of Jacob is our refuge. 



KA U! 




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